A brief description of 60s films

To begin this blog, I just wanted to post a quick excerpt of my Senior Thesis. What I would like to do is correlate film to historical events showing how it represents culture. These thoughts are often a little more abstract, but I believe film describes a historical culture that can be lost in mere facts. Plots and themes run through history changing from decade to decade, from crisis to crisis. In my paper, I attempted to show the change between an optimistic fifties to a pessimistic sixties and why I felt it happened. Here is the conclusion of the paper. I couldn't even try and post all 40 pages of the paper... sorry :)

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The movies of the fifties and sixties represent polar opposites; however there is an obvious transition between the two decades which are reflected in films. Mainly, international events such as the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis help to motivate films to take a different stance than the decade before. The heroic deeds in all six movies define a struggle that is felt across the nation; a struggle between communism and capitalism, and a struggle between nations. The theoretical ideas concerning communism and nuclear war were often to idealistic during the fifties. Heroes in This Island Earth and The Blob faced incredible odds fighting hostile alien beings. Characters appear to be heroic in On the Beach and The Birds but in the end these heroes are unable to save themselves. This in ability implies a beginning of change. By the sixties, heroic characters struggle with questions concerning an acceptable loss of life. They show an inner struggle in debate over the outcome and necessary steps of the war. In Fail-Safe, it cost two major cities. In Dr. Strangelove, it’s the whole world. Either way the theory behind MAD is subjectively acceptable, but it becomes dangerous when politicians believe that victory is still possible.

During the next decade movies are riddled with lowered expectations. As America enters into another endless war with Vietnam, movies begin to move in interesting directions. Movies help us to see the dissent within public opinion during the sixties. Most importantly it shows the path films took and the large transition between the fifties and the sixties. The present Russian threat influenced the transition greatly. Major events began to change theoretical ideals. Theoretical ideals like deterrence were quickly defined as an impossible answer to the cold war. MAD became a ridiculous answer. The efficiency of weaponry was ironic and ignored the effectiveness of a single nuclear weapon; rather than thirty-four thousand across the globe during the fifties and sixties.

In the eighties, there is a rise of new Cold War films. This is partially because of the United States President, Ronald Reagan. He was dedicated to foreign politics and finally ending the long lasting Cold War. Films like War Games (1983) discussed technology in war, yet again. Though this movie reflects a positive ending, the answer is found in a teenager, Matthew Broderick, who is able to outsmart a computer. The eighties are optimistic in change through humans rather than technology. The end of the Cold War did not end these types of apocalyptic films. Movies during our decade still represent the danger. Unique to our decade, these movies represent a rise in large corporations and corrupt politicians. The fifties represented a trust in government, and the sixties, a concern in the outcome of political theory.